


I Want Somebody Who Sees Me

by dancinginthecenteroftheworld



Series: JB Appreciation Week 2019 [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brienne is the Best, F/M, Femininity, Jaime/Brienne Appreciation Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 09:43:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20905598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinginthecenteroftheworld/pseuds/dancinginthecenteroftheworld
Summary: Just because Brienne isn't suited for girly pursuits doesn't mean she hates them.For the JB Appreciation Week Prompt All Things Brienne.





	I Want Somebody Who Sees Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is an attempt to explore Brienne's relationship to femininity and the way she's been shown to be an inner romantic. Inspired by janie_tangerine's I'm not a pretty girl (that's not what I do).
> 
> Beta'd by maevewren who is the best ever.

Everyone who looks at Brienne Tarth assumes that she’s always been a tomboy, has always hated all things girly. She lets them think that, even though nothing could be further from the truth.

When she’s a little girl, Brienne loves pink and princesses and glitter just as much as any other feminine child. She twirls around the house in pink dresses with skirts that billow around her, has tea parties with all of her stuffed animals, and dreams about meeting a handsome prince who will fall in love with her.

When she’s four, her father signs her up for ballet class. Brienne loves it. She loves the pink tights and the black leotards and the way they all clap and thank the teacher after the lesson. Brienne plays a mouse in the local production of the Nutcracker and watches the sugar plum fairy dance in her pink tutu and dreams that someday it will be her on stage.

Brienne is already taller than most of the girls in her class by the time she’s five, but tall isn’t necessarily a bad thing in ballet so it doesn’t bother her. Except that time keeps going, and while the other girls in class start to slim out and become delicate and grown-up, Brienne just gets stockier and more muscled.

By the time Brienne is seven, it’s clear she’s never going to look like a ballerina should and she shoves her ballet shoes in the trash can and pretends she doesn’t care about dancing anyway. 

Her father suggests soccer, and Brienne doesn’t like it as much as she likes dancing, but she does like getting to move around and run.

This only lasts a few months before the other parents start worrying that Brienne, who is clumsy as well as big and tall, is going to seriously injure one of the other girls on the team. 

That’s at about the same time Brienne overhears her classmates making fun of her for how she looks, mocking her skirts and cardigans and saying it’s stupid that she tries to be a real girl. When Brienne tells the teacher, the woman is sympathetic, but gently suggests that maybe pink isn’t a great color for her, and that maybe she’d be more comfortable in pants and tee shirts. 

Brienne isn’t more comfortable in jeans and tee shirts, but it means people are less obviously cruel, so she wears them anyway. 

When she is ten, her father signs her up for softball, which Brienne honestly hates, because she really doesn’t like having anything thrown at her face, especially not after she breaks her nose for the first time. 

But her long legs make her faster than most of the other girls, so Brienne sticks with it because it’s nice to have something that she’s at least sort of good at. It’s nice to hear people say “good job” when she scores and helps the team win, even if they don’t invite her to go to their sleepovers or hang out outside of practice.

Then her father hires a nanny to help – well, Brienne isn’t exactly sure what Nanny Roelle is supposed to help with, but her father says he doesn’t know how to raise a young lady and so he brings the woman in.

Nanny Roelle takes one look at Brienne, heaves a heavy sigh, and tells her to give up on any romantic dreams she has and start living in reality. 

"You are not a pretty girl," Nanny Roelle had says crisply. "So you need to take any fairy tales you have in your head and understand that they are never going to be true for you."

Nanny Roelle tells Brienne the best thing she can do for herself is to be invisible. To try to blend in and avoid drawing attention. 

So Brienne learns to make herself smaller, to hunch over and draw into herself, wear the dullest colors possible and hide behind the strands of her hair. She doesn't grow it too long, to avoid any impression that she's trying (and failing) at femininity, but it's long enough. 

She even quits the softball team, because she can't hide on the field.

Nanny Roelle tells Brienne that men will not love her, and that she should accept that she will never be desired. The best Brienne can hope for, she is told, is that one day when she is older she will meet a man who is willing to settle for her. Perhaps because she will inherit her father's modest fortune or perhaps to get closer to her father and succeed in his fishing company. Or perhaps because he is tired and wants a woman who will be patient and non-demanding, who will perform wifely tasks and manage his house.

Brienne vows that she will be single forever rather than put up with that. Even if her heart is breaking into a million pieces as she does so.

This does not stop Nanny Roelle from doing her best to mold Brienne into someone who will be a paragon of wifely virtue in the body of an ugly giant. Brienne learns to clean and to cook. She is forced to learn to sew and knit and embroider, and while some part of her does enjoy some of it, the whole thing is tainted by the reasons she's learning. Brienne learns impeccable manners and even dancing.

It's at dancing that she meets Renly for the first time, when they are eleven. It's cotillion, where she is forced to sit awkwardly at tables and learn which fork to use and how to pour tea and how to dance. When they are released from lessons and told to choose partners at their leisure, Brienne quietly removes herself to sit at a table in the corner, watching the other girls twirl around.

Brienne isn't bad at dancing, she's actually quite good, but she towers above all the boys and is broader in the shoulders, too. Her plain dress, the plainest in the room, and white gloves look absurd on her hulking frame.

Renly marches over to the corner, pulls her up and dances with her for most of the afternoon. 

"Screw all those losers," he tells her when she asks why. "You and I are the best dancers here, we'll have more fun with each other than anyone else."

Brienne develops a crush on him instantly, though she never tells him. She's glad of it a few years later, when they are thirteen and he quietly whispers to her that he thinks he's gay. 

Part of her wonders if that's why he spends time with her in the first place, because Brienne is the closest he can get to a boy without raising too many suspicions.

When she's twelve, Brienne gets her period for the first time and bursts into tears. She's not sure if it's because she hates all that it represents, the possibility of family and children she will never have, or because she's so relieved that some part of her is doing exactly what women are supposed to do.

Her father overhears Nanny Roelle suggesting just that, while also listing all the ways Brienne is a failure, and promptly fires her.

Renly starts dating Loras in middle school, though Renly is still in the closet, and actually keeps hanging out with Brienne, which she never expected.

It's Loras who suggests, after a Saturday where she and Renly join him and his brothers horsing around on the yard and playing at various sports, that she try football. 

That's when she meets Jaime Lannister, quarterback and golden boy and, as it turns out, the incredibly infuriating love of her life.

Not that it's easy for them to get there. They're both stubborn and difficult and it takes a lot of time for them to work out that the attraction is mutual.

The first time Jaime asks her to prom is his second junior year, her sophomore year. He’s embarrassed about being held back and asks her to go as his friend, or that’s what he says, anyhow, and Brienne turns him down. She says she’s not interested in prom and he believes her.

That doesn’t stop him from changing his mind last minute and showing up at her house to drag her out, still in her tee shirt and jeans, at the last minute. Jaime somehow charms their way in without tickets and they’re only there for the last few songs, but he drags her onto the dance floor anyway and is delighted to find that she actually knows how to dance. 

The second time is her junior year, and they’ve finally realized they’re dancing around each other in the exact same way and started dating, but she says again she’s not interested in dances. They’ve barely started going out and Brienne isn’t entirely convinced it’s not a joke. But it’s his senior year, so he talks her into it. Brienne dreams of wearing a pretty dress, but she hears her teammates laughing about the idea and ends up in a pants suit.

It’s a very pretty pants suit, blue and flowy, and Jaime certainly seems to appreciate how she looks in it despite her disbelief, but it’s still different from what all of the other girls are wearing.

Brienne tries not to mind, tries not to think about it, but she still ends up crying in the bathroom and trying to hide it.

She’d probably have managed, too, if Jaime didn’t have some strange sixth sense about her and barge in (he sends Sansa to check that it’s clear first, because he’s not a creep), and he won’t rest until she spills all of it to him.

Brienne figures he’ll laugh at her and make fun of her, but he doesn’t. He kisses her, their first kiss, in a stupid bathroom when she’s been crying, and tells her that he’s never seen her as less of a girl.

Brienne’s senior year, Jaime convinces her to wear a dress if she wants to. It’s not the kind of dress Brienne always dreamed of, it’s simple and blue, but it’s the first time she’s worn a dress since she was eleven. 

When Jaime smiles at her and pins on her corsage, Brienne feels like she’s walking on air. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people making fun of her at the dance – there are, because there always will be jerks, but Jaime dances with her and smiles at her like she’s everything he ever wanted.

After prom, Jaime whisks her away to a fancy hotel room and spends the rest of the night showing her exactly how much he wants her, in every single way. 

Brienne never dreamed that a man like Jaime would look at her, would love her, but somehow he does. Still does, through college where so many girls throw themselves at him and now, when she’s a law student who spends more time with her books than him.

"I want you to have your dream wedding," Jaime says, running his finger along her cheek while they're lying in bed. 

"Jaime, I haven't dreamed about my wedding since I was five," Brienne says.

"So?" Jaime catches her hand, holding it where they can both admire the diamond and sapphire ring he'd slipped on it earlier, both of them crying. "I remember prom."

"Which one," Brienne says drily, and he pokes her in the side.

"If you don't want a big wedding, that's fine," Jaime says. "But don't say you don’t because you think you'll look ridiculous."

It takes Jaime and Sansa and Margaery and Renly to convince her to actually go for it.

So now she's clutching her father's arm, wondering if she's made a mistake in picking out this dress with its large, flowing skirt and delicate silver and gold embroidery on the hem.

She can see her bridal attendants, dressed in blue, and Jaime's groomspeople, lining the altar. Jaime has his back to her, facing the Septon, but even from behind he look stunning. Even Cersei manages to look happy, although she and Brienne are never going to be friends. 

Brienne takes a deep breath and holds tighter her bouquet of pink peonies as the music starts to play. 

When Jaime turns around and smiles at her, she feels like the princess she never thought she’d get to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Cool As I Am by Dar Williams. 
> 
> Brienne is often lumped in with Arya, but they seem to be very different. Arya clearly hates feminine pursuits, but Brienne seems more resigned to not being suited for them and so I wanted to dig into that and look at how she views her body as putting things out or reach rather than truly disliking them. In addition to being inspired by janie_tangerine's story, it's also inspired by conversations I remember having in middle school. I'm more Arya-sized, and I remember some girls who were gymnasts who hit a growth spurt and had to stop crying to me that I was wasting my body because I could do that and they had to stop. And it made me feel guilty but also think a lot about how much our physicality impacts our choices. 
> 
> Also, note, I was TERRIBLE at gymnastics and can't even do a cartwheel, to this day and I'm in my mid-30s.


End file.
